110+ Nikola Tesla Quotes On Success, Electricity And Universe

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. He is also known for his groundbreaking work in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla is credited with inventing the first alternating current motor and developing the principles of radio transmission. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Nikola Tesla on love, life, success.

Top 10 Nikola Tesla Quotes

1. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.
2. If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
3. I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own
4. My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.
5. It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages around the world so simply that any individual can carry and operate his own apparatus.
6. The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.
7. If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.
8. In a crystal we have clear evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being
9. If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe.
10. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.

Nikola Tesla Short Quotes

• What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.
• I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
• Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance.
• Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.
• Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
• We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.
• Crystals are living beings at the beginning of creation.
• A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.
• The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains.
• The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Love

Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it. — Nikola Tesla

Love: I recognize the emotion for what it is, an irrational self-destructive impulse, which is disguised as joy. — Nikola Tesla

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything. — Nikola Tesla

It’s not the love you make. It's the love you give. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Life

I could only achieve success in my life through self-discipline, and I applied it until my wish and my will became one. — Nikola Tesla

The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead. — Nikola Tesla

The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind. — Nikola Tesla

A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. — Nikola Tesla

Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life. — Nikola Tesla

We build but to tear down. Most of our work and resource is squandered. Our onward march is marked by devastation. Everywhere there is an appalling loss of time, effort and life. A cheerless view, but true. — Nikola Tesla

From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. — Nikola Tesla

Inventors don't have time for married life. — Nikola Tesla

Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development. — Nikola Tesla

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Electricity

Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels. — Nikola Tesla

It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering — only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world. — Nikola Tesla

I predict that very shortly the old-fashioned incandescent lamp, having a filament heated to brightness by the passage of electric current through it, will entirely disappear. — Nikola Tesla

The day when we shall know exactly what electricity is will chronicle an event probably greater, more important than any other recorded in the history of the human race. The time will come when the comfort, the very existence, perhaps, of man will depend upon that wonderful agent. — Nikola Tesla

I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it. — Nikola Tesla

We may produce at will, from a sending station. an electrical effect in any particular region of the globe; we may determine the relative position or course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or its speed. — Nikola Tesla

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses. — Nikola Tesla

As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents - electric wave motion - will have the sway. — Nikola Tesla

Of the various branches of electrical investigation, perhaps the most interesting and immediately the most promising is that dealing with alternating currents. — Nikola Tesla

Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Universe

Throughout the infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe. — Nikola Tesla

Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment. — Nikola Tesla

Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. — Nikola Tesla

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance. — Nikola Tesla

Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. — Nikola Tesla

One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheel work of the universe. The very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery. — Nikola Tesla

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheel-work of the universe. — Nikola Tesla

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally. — Nikola Tesla

Universal peace as a result of cumulative effort through centuries past might come into existence quickly - not unlike a crystal that suddenly forms in a solution which has been slowly prepared. Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity. — Nikola Tesla

The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Science

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity. — Nikola Tesla

To conquer by sheer force is becoming harder and harder every day. Defensive is getting continuously the advantage of offensive, as we progress in the satanic science of destruction. — Nikola Tesla

Up to that time I never realized that I possessed any particular gift of discovery, but Lord Rayleigh, whom I always considered as an ideal man of science, had said so and if that was the case, I felt that I should concentrate on some big idea. — Nikola Tesla

Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.' From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. — Nikola Tesla

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified. — Nikola Tesla

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Energy

The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds, that although I have preached against it for twenty-five years, there are still some who believe it to be realizable. — Nikola Tesla

I am trying to awake the energy contained in the air. These are the main sources of energy. What is considered as empty space is just a manifestation of matter that is not awakened. — Nikola Tesla

There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment — Nikola Tesla

It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature. — Nikola Tesla

So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work. — Nikola Tesla

All peoples everywhere should have free energy sources. — Nikola Tesla

Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price. — Nikola Tesla

We wind a simple ring of iron with coils; we establish the connections to the generator, and with wonder and delight we note the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit and direct energy at will. — Nikola Tesla

The harness of waterfalls is the most economical method known for drawing energy from the sun. — Nikola Tesla

If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Frequency

Our entire biological system, the brain, and the Earth itself, work on the same frequencies. — Nikola Tesla

When a coil is operated with currents of very high frequency, beautiful brush effects may be produced, even if the coil be of comparatively small dimensions. The experimenter may vary them in many ways, and, if it were nothing else, they afford a pleasing sight. — Nikola Tesla

Alternate currents, especially of high frequencies, pass with astonishing freedom through even slightly rarefied gases. The upper strata of the air are rarefied. To reach a number of miles out into space requires the overcoming of difficulties of a merely mechanical nature. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Nature

Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs. — Nikola Tesla

My mother understood human nature better and never chided. She knew that a man cannot be saved from his own foolishness or vice by someone else's efforts or protests, but only by the use of his own will. — Nikola Tesla

When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven-league boots. — Nikola Tesla

There is no subject more captivating, more worthy of study, than nature. To understand this great mechanism, to discover the forces which are active, and the laws which govern them, is the highest aim of the intellect of man. — Nikola Tesla

I come from a very wiry and long-lived race. Some of my ancestors have been centenarians, and one of them lived 129 years. I am determined to keep up the record and please myself with prospects of great promise. Then again, nature has given me a vivid imagination. — Nikola Tesla

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. — Nikola Tesla

Nature may reach the same result in many ways. — Nikola Tesla

Is nature a giant cat? If so, who strokes its back? — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Mind

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone-that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born. — Nikola Tesla

When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in my thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. — Nikola Tesla

Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work. — Nikola Tesla

Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences — Nikola Tesla

The progressive development of man [has as its] ultimate purpose the complete mastery of mind over the material world. — Nikola Tesla

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind. — Nikola Tesla

To create and to annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Future

When wireless is fully applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts. — Nikola Tesla

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. — Nikola Tesla

No rocket will reach the moon save by a miraculous discovery of an explosive far more energetic than any known. And even if the requisite fuel were produced, it would still have to be shown that the rocket machine would operate at 459 degrees below zero-the temperature of interplanetary space. — Nikola Tesla

The future will show whether my foresight is as accurate now as it has proved heretofore. — Nikola Tesla

The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine. — Nikola Tesla

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Quotes About Work

This work somehow awakened my dormant powers of will and I began to practice self-control. At first my resolutions faded like snow in April, but in a little while I conquered my weakness and felt a pleasure I never knew before - that of doing as I willed. — Nikola Tesla

Sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice to my work. — Nikola Tesla

Each day we go to our work in the hope of discovering. — Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Famous Quotes And Sayings

What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment. — Nikola Tesla

Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists. — Nikola Tesla

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called 'the greatest evil in the world.' The friction which results from ignorance ... can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent. — Nikola Tesla

Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. — Nikola Tesla

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects. — Nikola Tesla

My wireless transmitter does not use Hertzian waves, which are a grievous myth, but sound waves in the aether. — Nikola Tesla

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. — Nikola Tesla

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile. — Nikola Tesla

For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. — Nikola Tesla

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. — Nikola Tesla

Within a few years a simple and inexpensive device, readily carried about, will enable one to receive on land or sea the principal news, to hear a speech, a lecture, a song or play of a musical instrument, conveyed from any other region of the globe. — Nikola Tesla

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. — Nikola Tesla

Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view... The best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse. — Nikola Tesla

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more. — Nikola Tesla

All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. — Nikola Tesla

In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired. The perfection of this means of reading thought will create a revolution for the better in all our social relations. — Nikola Tesla

One of the great events in my life was my first meeting with Edison. This wonderful man, who had received no scientific training, yet had accomplished so much, filled me with amazement. I felt that the time I had spent studying languages, literature and art was wasted; though later, of course, I learned this was not so. — Nikola Tesla

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization. — Nikola Tesla

We have soon to have everywhere smoke annihilators, dust absorbers, ozonizers, sterilizers of water, air, food and clothing, and accident preventers on streets, elevated roads and in subways. It will become next to impossible to contract disease germs or get hurt in the city, and country folk will got to town to rest and get well. — Nikola Tesla

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea. — Nikola Tesla

Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia; all force tends to persist — Nikola Tesla

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. — Nikola Tesla

We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences — Nikola Tesla

I would not give my rotating field discovery for a thousand inventions, however valuable... A thousand years hence, the telephone and the motion picture camera may be obsolete, but the principle of the rotating magnetic field will remain a vital, living thing for all time to come. — Nikola Tesla

If the genius of invention were to reveal to-morrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought. — Nikola Tesla

To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end. — Nikola Tesla

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power. — Nikola Tesla

But I hope that it will also be demonstrated soon that in my experiments in the West I was not merely beholding a vision, but had caught sight of a great and profound truth. — Nikola Tesla

I can now state that I have succeeded in operating a motive device by means of [cosmic rays]. I will tell you in the most general way, the cosmic ray ionizes the air, setting free many charges - ions and electrons. These charges are captured in a condenser which is made to discharge through the circuit of the motor. — Nikola Tesla

So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work... Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement. — Nikola Tesla

The entire Earth will be converted into a huge brain — Nikola Tesla

My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labour and sacrifices made. — Nikola Tesla

There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exciting thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb. — Nikola Tesla

The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by the succeeding frost. — Nikola Tesla

I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device. — Nikola Tesla

With a different form of wireless instrument devised by me some years ago it was found practicable to locate a body of metallic ore below the ground, and it seems that a submarine could be similarly detected. — Nikola Tesla

My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible. — Nikola Tesla

The economic transmission of power without wires is of all-surpassing importance to man. By its means he will gain complete mastery of the air, the sea and the desert. It will enable him to dispense with the necessity of mining, pumping, transporting and burning fuel, and so do away with innumerable causes of sinful waste. — Nikola Tesla

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look - for dizzier heights. — Nikola Tesla

Great moments are born great opportunity. — Nikola Tesla

An inventor's endeavor is essentially lifesaving. Whether he harnesses forces, improves devices, or provides new comforts and conveniences, he is adding to the safety of our existence. He is also better qualified than the average individual to protect himself in peril, for he is observant and resourceful. — Nikola Tesla

Ere long intelligence-transmitted without wires-will throb through the earth like a pulse through a living organism. The wonder is that, with the present state of knowledge and the experiences gained, no attempt is being made to disturb the electrostatic or magnetic condition of the earth, and transmit, if nothing else, intelligence. — Nikola Tesla

Life Lessons by Nikola Tesla

1. Always strive to think outside the box and challenge the status quo - Nikola Tesla was a pioneer in the field of electricity and engineering, and his inventions revolutionized the way we use energy today.
2. Believe in yourself and your ideas - despite facing numerous rejections and criticisms, Nikola Tesla never gave up on his dreams and was determined to make them a reality.
3. Persevere and never give up - even though Nikola Tesla faced many obstacles, he never stopped working hard and eventually achieved success.